


Lost and Found

by IncomingAlbatross



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Feels, Friendship, Gen, Identity Issues, Male-Female Friendship, Personal Growth, Sad ending?, absolutely no romance of any kind, jareth makes a brief appearance but he doesn't deserve a character tag, not sure how to tag this one honestly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 20:17:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20233765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IncomingAlbatross/pseuds/IncomingAlbatross
Summary: Sarah's spent years visiting the Labyrinth--learning, growing, helping other trapped mortals find their way home. But recently, she's begun wondering about her friends' origins as well...The Labyrinthisa place of the lost, after all.But if any of her friends have had something taken from them by this place, she'll be happy to help them get it back. They did the same for her, once upon a time.





	Lost and Found

Sarah was beginning to wonder whether any of this had been a good idea.

In the years since she’d first visited the Labyrinth, she had grown far better-acquainted with the place. Not only did her friends from the strange realms come to visit her often (she was in her first year of college now, and they had been a great support in times of homesickness), but before long she had found herself returning to the Labyrinth while she slept.

She always found herself in her own bed come morning, and it didn’t worry her--she knew that, if she kept a sharp mind and a strong spirit, there was nothing there that could harm her. She’d had adventures, made more friends (though none as close as her first three, the ones who had stood with her against Jareth), and learned more about the world of the lost and the unearthly.

Only recently, though (after helping another lost kid through the Bog and on his way back home), had Sarah truly thought to wonder how her friends had come to live in the Labyrinth. They’d never talked about having pasts, and she was unsure whether she should ask…but, finally, she did.

Sir Didymus had some vague recollections, when his memory was prodded, of having been some sort of stage performer, perhaps? He knew he’d left his old life behind to quest for his true place in the world, though, so Sarah didn’t prod too hard.

Ludo had offered a simple “Ludo born in Labyrinth,” which wasn’t a surprise to Sarah. They’d found his family some time ago, reuniting them after a long time separated by the goblins that had captured Ludo. (Considering his powers over rocks, Sarah wondered if Ludo’s family had actually been there longer than the Labyrinth... But time didn’t work the same way here, so maybe there was no point in asking.)

Hoggle was the most evasive--not that that was unusual, given his company, but it seemed more serious this time.

“Ain’t ever been nothin’ but Hoggle,” he’d insisted, refusing to make eye contact with Sarah. “You know me. You seen me, when you got here the first time--s’all I ever was before _ you _ showed up and started changin’ things. Nothin’ to tell for me.”

Sarah had frowned thoughtfully. “You mean….you just hung around outside the gates, killing fairies? What about before that?”

He shrugged. “What _ about _before it? Ain’t no before. I told you, I’m nothin’ but Hoggle. Allus have been, allus will be, maybe.”

She’d bit her lip and dropped the subject, not wanting to make him uncomfortable. Later, though--when it was just the two of them--she’d asked again.

“Hoggle…” she’d said, “I don’t want to be rude, but…do you remember _ anything _ before all of, well, this?” She waved a hand at the Labyrinth gates and front garden. “Do you remember being a kid?”

He’d sighed, looking at the ground, shoulders slumping in defeat. She’d felt a pang of guilt. “I _ told _ you,” he said. “I ain’t got no past, nothin’ before bein’ the dwarf at the gates. Don’t remember anything changing, not till you came along.”

“Everyone else seems to have some past, though.” She’d sat on the ground next to him, crossing her legs. “You must have come from somewhere… Maybe you just lost it. Things do get lost here, you know.”

He’d turned to look at her. “Y’really think so?”

She’d grinned at him. “I think it’s worth looking for, anyway.”

See? It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

It had still seemed like a good idea as they investigated, on her next visit, and managed to find a few threads of information. It had _ still _ seemed like a good idea as they figured out Hoggle _ had _ come to the Labyrinth from somewhere else, even if they couldn’t figure out where or why or how. It had seemed like an especially good idea when the Worm had let it drop that, in that case, he was probably human--”No one _ starts out _ a dwarf, oh dear no!” Hoggle had actually been excited about that, in his defensive Hoggle-ish way.

In summary, it had seemed like a good idea _ right until _ His Glam Highness The Goblin King got involved.

Sarah would have been perfectly happy to never see him again in her life, but she was resigned to crossing paths with him occasionally. It was an inevitable hazard of the Labyrinth, like having to skirt around the Bog or be shouted at by the false alarms. Usually, though, even if being in his vicinity was unpleasant, it wasn’t _ awful. _

Of course, _ usually _ he didn’t show up purely to _ patronize and insult her friends_.

“Why,” Jareth asked, resting one forearm on his propped-up knee, looking down his nose at Hoggle, “why do you think you ended up with _ this _ form? An old, ugly, repulsive little dwarf--aged, alone, _ nothing? _ It’s because that’s what you were _ inside._” He laughed lightly. “It may not have been your human form at the time, but it was your only future, here or elsewhere! The Labyrinth merely…speeds up the processes of the inevitable.”

Sarah glared at him, slipping an arm around Hoggle’s shoulders. “Why do you think _ you _ know anything about him?” she asked. ”You don’t even know his name.” Her voice hardened. “Leave my friend alone.”

He twitched, but did not leave. “I may have no power over you, _your_ _highness,_” he retorted sarcastically, “but neither do you command my comings and goings. Particularly when I am merely conversing with another.”

“She’s right, though,” Hoggle ventured. Sarah smiled fiercely. “Y’don’t know my name.”

“Why should I care to?” he asked, arching a contemptuous eyebrow. “As I said, you are nothing. And anyway, it’s not as if it’s even your true name. Not even _ you _ know that.”

Hoggle stared at him. “What?”

Jareth laughed again. “Oh, come now. You think you’d be quite so pathetic if you’d managed to hold onto your name? What you are, my foul little friend, is _ very thoroughly lost_.” He bent over, leaning closer to Hoggle’s face. “Of course, if you’d ever been capable of being more than you are now, you wouldn’t have _ gotten _ so lost in the first place, now would you?”

Sarah was _ very seriously _ contemplating slapping him.

However, Hoggle beat her to the punch--quite literally. A balled-up dwarf fist flew up and hit Jareth right in his pointy, glittery face.

His head snapped back, although Sarah didn’t know if it was the force of the blow or the sheer shock that had done it. He stared down at Hoggle, amazed.

To be fair, Hoggle looked almost equally stunned. He set his jaw anyway, though, and glared up at the goblin king.

“Leave me alone!” he said. “Nobody calls me _ nothin’._” He paused. “‘Cept _ me._”

Jareth drew in a deep, outraged breath--but before he could speak, Sarah stepped between them.

“You heard him,” she said firmly. “He said to leave him alone. You want to bother him any more?” Her eyes narrowed. “You’re going to have to go through me.”

There was a moment’s pause. Then Jareth heaved a dramatic sigh and turned away. “Remember what I said, dwarf…”

“_Leave,_” Sarah cut him off.

He vanished.

Pest control accomplished, Sarah turned back to her friend and knelt beside him.

“You know he was just making stuff up, right, Hoggle?” she asked anxiously.

He looked down at his wrinkled, leathery hands. “I…I mean, I know he’s a liar, Sarah,” he croaked. “But what did he say that was _ wrong?_”

She frowned for a moment, lips pressed together tightly. Then she smiled again, putting a hand on his shoulder, and leaned down to press her forehead against his.

“He said you were nothing,” she answered, letting her voice fill with the bright surety of her own affection. “And you’re _ not _ nothing. You’re my _ friend. _ And Ludo’s friend, and Sir Didymus’s friend. And Toby’s friend--you’ve kept Toby safe every time he’s ended up here, and you know it! Is that nothing?”

His head shook slightly, side to side, beneath hers.

“You’re brave--I know you don’t think so, but you are when you need to be. When _ we _ need you to be. And you’re loyal, and you’re clever, and you’re funny. That’s not nothing, none of it. That’s Hoggle.”

She pulled away a little, just enough to look him in the eye. “And I don’t care if that’s not your ‘true name.’ It’s _ you, _ and I think that’s enough. If you don’t, I’ll be happy to help you look for the name you had before, but…” She frowned for a moment, thinking how to put it into words. “Even if you’re not Hoggle, everything that’s Hoggle _ is _ you. And that’s plenty.”

Hoggle threw his arms around her.

She hugged him back, pretending not to hear his poorly-stifled sniffles. “Jareth’s a jerk,” she said to the top of his head. “_And _ a liar. And I don’t think he actually understands people that well, you know?”

He nodded, slowly pulling out of the hug. “Guess not,” he said, swiping at his eyes. “He weren’t expectin’ me to punch him, that’s for certain.”

Sarah laughed. “Neither was I! I bet it felt good, though.”

He looked down at his own fist, clenching and unclenching it. “Guess it did,” he admitted uncertainly. “I didn’t _ plan _it, y’understand, he just--” Hoggle shook his head. “Just got too close for me t’stand for, I guess. I ain’t gonna put up with anybody talkin’ down to me like that, y’know? Not nowadays.”

She beamed at him. “It was amazing, Hoggle! Oh, man, his _ face…_” She found herself laughing again at the memory of the goblin king’s sheer, shocked affront. Hoggle laughed too, rusty and creaky but genuine.

“So,” Sarah said after a moment. “Ignoring _ that _ jerk--do you want to keep looking? It’s up to you, Hoggle, honest.”

He frowned, thinking. “I s’pose…Yes.” He looked up at her. “Yes!” he repeated. “Worst comes to worst, well, like y’said, I’m still Hoggle now. And I ain’t lettin’ _ him _scare me anymore.”

Sarah grinned at him. “All right,” she said. “Let’s keep investigating.”

* * *

After dangers untold and hardships unnumbered (as always, when doing anything important in the Labyrinth), they finally reached the door.

The door Hoggle had, once upon a forgotten time, entered the Labyrinth by.

“Hm,” Sarah said, looking at it.

It wasn't a very illuminating door, unfortunately. Set in the middle of one of the Labyrinth’s outer walls, it was rectangular, made of wooden planks, with an iron handle and no lock attached to it. It could have led _ anywhere. _

And, unfortunately, they still didn’t have any information about Hoggle’s life outside the Labyrinth.

She looked to her friend. “Well, Hoggle? Does it jog any memories, or anything?”

Hoggle glanced around, chewing on his lip, eyes anxious. “…Mebbe,” he said slowly. “I think…I think I might remember bein’ here?”

She lit up. “Hoggle, that’s _ great! _ What do you remember?”

But he just shook his head back and forth. “Couldn’t tell ya, Sarah. I just…I look ‘round ‘n’ I feel…lost? Like I was searchin for somethin’, an’ never found it…” He stared around, like a just-awakened sleepwalker. “But I can’t say whether I was tryin’ t’get out, or…tryin’ t’get _ in._”

Sarah bit her own lip. “Darn,” she said softly, feeling the inadequacy of the word as soon as she said it. “I was hoping…hoping just finding the way back here would give us some answers.”

“Sorry, Sarah.” Hoggle’s head hung low.

“It’s not your fault!”

But he refused to look at her. “Ain’t it? I’m the one that got m’self lost in here…Lost so well _ I _ can’t even dig me back up again.” He scoffed. “Can’t even remember how I got lost…”

“_Hoggle,_” Sarah said. “This is for you--remember?” She gave him a teasing smile. “If you can’t remember your past, it doesn’t hurt anyone else. You don’t have to beat yourself up over it.”

He sighed, but lifted his head again. “All right, all right,” he said grumpily. “I just…don’ like bein’ here. I remember…_wantin’ _ somethin', Sarah.” He hit a hand against his broad forehead, suddenly and fiercely. “I wanted _ somethin’_, and…and…I gave up. That’s what happened. I couldn’t find whatever I wanted, an’ I gave up an’ _ lost _ m’self!”

“Hey, hey!” Sarah said urgently, taking hold of his wrist. “I _ just _ said don’t beat yourself up, Hoggle, c’mon. People _ get _ lost in the Labyrinth, it’s what it does_._”

“You didn’t,” he muttered, peering up at her with one reluctant eye.

She smiled down at him. “_I _ had help. Remember?”

“…S’pose you had a bit o’ help.”

“And you didn’t have anyone, did you?” she pointed out--only to see a new stab of pain across his wrinkled face.

“…Hoggle?”

“I didn’t,” he said quietly, hoarsely. “An’ I think that was th’ worst part of….everythin’.”

“Oh,” Sarah murmured, sinking to her knees. “I’m so sorry, Hoggle.”

He just nodded.

“So…” she said quietly, after a minute, “do you think you were alone because you got separated from your life outside, or…because you were alone out there?”

He shrugged, throwing up his hands. “I don’t _ know, _ Sarah!” he croaked. “I feel like I was lookin’ for somethin’ specific, somethin’ lost--which should mean I had somethin’ t’lose, shouldn’t it? But…but I don’t know _ when _I lost it, or if it’s even real for sure.”

He looked between her and the door. “But I don’t think I’ll figure out any more here, t’be honest. I’m…whoever I used t’be’s too lost now. Too buried…”

He looked at the door once more. “But if I open that…I’ll be goin’ in blind.” He scowled. “I hate goin’ inta things blind.”

There was a moment of silence, in this abandoned, ivy-grown offshoot of the Labyrinth.

“But you’ve got all the information you’re gonna have, huh?”

“Guess so.”

Another pause.

“And we probably won’t be able to find this door again, right?”

“That’s how th’Labyrinth generally works.”

Sarah rubbed her palms back and forth across her jeans.

“So…” she said at last, “what are you going to do, Hoggle?”

He looked at her, startled and clearly torn. “_Do? _I…I dunno. Y’need me, dontcha?”

“I’ll always need you,” she said. “But…I can survive without you. And this isn’t about me, or any of the rest of us. What do _ you _ need, Hoggle?”

He blinked, a hunted look growing in his eyes. “I…I don’t…”

She waited, but his distress only grew more pronounced.

“…I don’t need nothin’,” he said, shaking his head. He began sidling away from the doorway. “Hoggle don’t never need nothin’, you know me!”

She reached out a hand, grabbing his, and he froze at the touch. “_Hoggle. _ Hoggle, hey, you don’t need to do that,” she said quickly. “You don’t--you don’t have to hide from this, okay? It’s okay, I’m not gonna push you, no one’s gonna tell you there’s a ‘wrong’ choice here. Just don’t--don’t be afraid? Please?”

He sighed, shoulders slumping out of their stiffened pose, and looked at her. “I dunno what I need, Sarah,” he confessed. “I got no idea at all. I ain’t--I ain’t never _ made _ a choice this big before, that I remember.”

She frowned a little. “You chose to fight Jareth,” she reminded him. “I feel like that was a pretty big choice, wasn’t it?”

“Ah, that was nothin’,” he said, waving a hand. “I mean, it was hard, but it weren’t _ complicated. _ That was just choosin’ between me an’ you. This is…” He gulped. “This is _ all _ about me. I don’t know where t’start with _ that._”

Sarah’s heart twisted a little in her chest, but she found herself smiling at her friend just the same. “Well, I guess we’ll have to figure that out together, then,” she said. “If you don’t know what you need…do you know what you want? That’s a start.”

“I want…” He looked between her and the doorway again.

“I want a _ lot _ o’ things,” he said in a rush. “I want t’stay here, where I’ve got friends and I know who I am--sort of--and what I’m doin’ with m’self. But I want to know more, too--where I came from, what m’real name is. I like bein’ Hoggle, but Hoggle isn’t all o’ me and I want t’ _ be _ me. But…I’m scared, too. What if th' real me is _ worse _ than Hoggle? I can’t come back if I go through there. It don't work that way.”

Hoggle looked back at her. “But…I think, maybe more’n anythin’ else, I want to know what I was searchin’ for when I got here. I lost that, and…anythin’ I looked for that hard must be worth somethin’, right? Even if’n I can’t find it…I’d like to remember somethin’ that important.”

Sarah chewed her lip. “So…you want to go through, then?”

“I don’t _ know, _Sarah!” he burst out. “I don’t want to leave--I mean, mebbe I do, but I want t’ stay too. I want to stay with you, and Ludo, and that idiot Didymus. I got--I got _ friends, _ Sarah, an’ somethin’ like a home, an’ I want t’ keep ‘em.”

He looked up at her, expression torn and almost pleading. “You could end it, y’know. Just tell me y’needed me here, an’ I’d stay an’ be just _ fine. _ Wouldn’t even have t’choose.”

“…I know,” Sarah said, holding both his hands in hers. She blinked back tears. “It’d be easy.” _ I don’t want to lose you. I’d miss you. You’re my best friend. _ She swallowed down the words and said instead, “But I don’t want to take that choice away--to choose who you are _ for _ you. I think…this is one of the things that you _ have _ to decide yourself, to really be _ you _ afterwards.” She mustered up a shaky smile. “That’s how it’s done. Remember?”

He snorted in recognition. “Oh, well, if that’s how it’s _ done…_” he said wryly, and she knew he understood.

“So. You know what you want, Hoggle. Does that help you figure out what you need--to be happy with yourself, to feel like you’re…_you_, who you want to be?”

He stood there for a long moment, eyes closed, hands still holding fast to hers.

“…Promise me,” he said at last, voice small, “whatever’s on the other side…you’ll still be here? Whoever _ I _am, you’ll still remember ol’ Hoggle? Not…not stop bein’ my friend?”

Sarah’s heart sank into her sneakers.

But the answer came as easy as breathing. “Whatever’s on the other side, Hoggle,” she said without hesitation, “and whoever you are on the other side, I’ll _ always _ be your friend.” She smiled, meeting his eyes squarely. “And for what it’s worth--whatever it might be? I’m not afraid of it. I know you, and I trust you. I promise. I always will.”

“Thanks,” he whispered. And he looked up at her, eyes full of gratitude…

And of determination. After a long, long moment, he spoke. “I need t’go, Sarah.”

She nodded.

“I need t’ find out what I left behind,” he continued, looking at the door. “Mebbe it’s not worth findin’, but…it’s who I was. And I can’t…I can’t run from that, not an’ be all right with myself. Mebbe it’s stupid, an’ reckless, an’ I should just leave well enough alone…but I can’t.” He looked back at her. “I need…I need t’be _ all _ of me. Not just the parts I held onto in here.”

Sarah nodded again, and pulled him into a fierce hug. “I’ll miss you, Hoggle,” she whispered. “But I get it. And…I’m proud of you, okay? I know you’ll be okay out there--you just gotta trust yourself.”

Hoggle, returning the hug adamantly, nodded into her shoulder. “Take care o’ yerself, little lady,” he croaked. “An’ the others--tell ‘em I said goodbye, would ya? Tell ‘em--make sure they know I didn’t _ want _ t’ leave.”

“I will,” she promised. “I will. And Hoggle--we’ll always be here, okay? If you do find your way back here--we’ll have a place for you, always."

His grip tightened for a second. “Thanks, Sarah. I…” He trailed off. “If I don’t go now, I never will.”

Sarah released him, reluctantly. “Hoggle?”

He shook his head, busying himself with his pouch of jewels. “I--I don’t think I’ll need this out there, Sarah,” he said, taking it from his belt. He held it out to her. “Give some of ‘em to the others? T’remember me by--and keep somethin’ for you, course. And for that brother o’ yours, too…”

She laughed, a little unevenly, taking it from him. “Hoggle,” she said. “As if we could ever forget you!”

“Ah, well,” he shrugged. “Might as well go to people who’ll appreciate them, right? I’m keepin’ this, though,” he added gruffly, displaying a familiar strand of green and pink on one wrist. “Don’t think you’re gettin’ that back! I mean, who knows if they’ve got ‘plastic’ where I come from? It might be _ valuable. _”

Sarah laughed again. “Hoggle…” A thousand things came to her mind to say, but none of them seemed quite right.

He just ducked his head, smiling shakily up at her. “I…I know, little lady. You take care, now, all right? I’ll see y’again. Somehow.”

“Somehow,” she echoed, trying not to doubt him. “Hoggle…good luck. You find everything you’re looking for, okay?”

“Do my best,” he said, shuffling toward the door. “Don’t worry about me, though. Hoggle’s got lot’s of practice at takin’ care o’ himself…”

She smiled sadly. “I know. I trust you, remember?”

“Don’t understand it…but yeah. I remember.”

He opened the door.

Sarah couldn’t see anything but fog beyond it.…But, from Hoggle’s expression, she thought he was seeing something more. He peered through, wide-eyed and wondering, blinking in what looked like sudden recognition, and leaned forward…

“Hoggle,” Sarah said, the words slipping out before she knew it, “don’t forget me.”

He turned back, just for an instant, and she saw her friend again. “Sarah,” he scoffed, as if the very idea were ridiculous. “Don’t _ you _ forget _ me._”

And then he walked through, and swung the door closed behind him, and was gone.

Sarah was alone in the silent, sunlit courtyard, on the edge of the Labyrinth.

She stayed there, kneeling on the paving-stones, for a few minutes--waiting. Just in case.

Nothing happened. The door didn’t open again. It wasn’t going to.

Sarah shifted, drawing her knees up to her chest and hugging her legs tightly. And then--_then, _ when it couldn’t change his mind, or hurt him, when there was no one left to see it--she dropped her face into her knees and let herself fall apart.

(She knew it was what he needed to do. She was glad he was doing it, and hoped it would make him happier and more whole than he’d been before.)

(But she needed Hoggle, now, and it was the first time he’d _ not _ come when she needed him.)


End file.
